Paranoid

After the joint operation at Wildwood, the crews of the Deepnight Revelation and CSS Illustrious prepare to part ways. The Commonwealth provides an officer to act as guide when they get to Commonwealth space, or until they meet up again. Lt Jacob Moray, not a science, but a general all rounder military officer. In exchange, the Illustrious gets one of the social scientists from the Deepnight.

They also swap cultural, historical and medical databases. Down on Wildwood, the planet’s government is finishing the clean up operation around the mound. The botanists that the crew spoke to are also happy because they suddenly have a lot more funding for performing their research.

A meet up between the two ships is planned for near Abyrezuky. It is expected that the Deepnight can make it to Opadajo and back to Abyrezuky in the time it will take for the Illustrious to reach Abyrezuky. It does mean though that the Deepnight won’t have much time for exploration.

At Abyrezuky, a high tech civilisation has gone suddenly quite, so that needs investigating. At Opadajo, there is a pyramid built by the Ancients which contains unknown technology (possibly). The crew think that their young priestess, Talliena, will be open the Pyramid since she is a direct descendent of those who were modified by the Ancients.

I did come up with a safe route for the Deepnight, but the players shaved a jump off it by opting to try refuelling from a world’s ocean. They’ve done it before, but it’s a bit more risky than a simple gas giant run. Since they may need to do this near Abyrezuky, it’s good practice to try it again somewhere safe first.

From Wildwood/1322 they jump to Ygehsa/1224. Around the small terrestrial world, they deploy their fleet of shuttles to collect water, process it, and bring it up to the Deepnight for refuelling. A simple crew check is required, which leads to an Incident. The incident turns out to be something good – so the Erline have rigged up some of the shuttles for remote piloting. It wasn’t cleared by the command crew, but they did it anyway. As it turns out, nothing goes wrong.

Then it’s a jump to Remeas/1228, which has a simple gas giant. It’s a quick refuel, ignoring the small number of colonists on the garden world nearby, and then another jump to Lanotecy/1231.

The gas giant there is again normal, but there’s a powered down ship in orbit. It’s a small ship, 200t, probably a trader or maybe a pirate. The Deepnight pings it before moving in closer, and they get a delayed response from the two crew members. They claim to be hiding from potential pirates, but they are originally from Opadajo. How convenient.

It takes some convincing to convince the two crew of the Prince of Water that the Deepnight is friendly. Daniel Holspeck and Hanna Dolfrey have little knowledge of history, so haven’t even heard of Terra, let alone the Imperium (first, second or third). Apparently education on Opadajo is limited to whatever the Mainframe thinks is needed by the populace.

The Mainframe dictates all aspects of life – work, marriage, housing etc. It is a crime to speak out against the Mainframe, or to not be happy. Daniel and Hanna managed to escape, got to the high tech world of Ocas Prime and managed to buy a small trade ship on a mortgage. They now make subsidised runs out to the periphery worlds, providing supplies to small colonies.

The Mainframe is doesn’t allow outsiders to visit, or for its own people to leave. It does bring in grain and other food supplies from the nearby world of Jasoyef/1436. That’s how Daniel and Hanna got out – the security at Jasoyef is much lower and sneaking in or out via the grain barges is a lot easier than sneaking past the orbital defences at Opadajo. Down on the planet, the police force consists of Robot enforcers.

This is where I provided a possible ‘safe’ way onto the planet. Smuggle crew members aboard one of the barges, then they can sneak off at the other end as it unloads its cargo. Alternatively, sneaking a small ship into the constant flow (about one every 30 minutes) of barges coming out of jump at Opadajo might also be an option.

But that would mean splitting the party, and the players didn’t like that idea. So it looks like the plan is to take the Deepnight Revelation in directly through the front door.

The local systems around Opadajo are lacking in suitable gas giants or water worlds to refuel from, requiring Jump-3 at least to get there. There are some small hidden fuel caches, but too small for a ship like the Deepnight to make use of. Opadajo is also flanked by two blue giant stars, which make navigation across those hexes a hazard. They are bright – from the surface of Opadajo itself they have an apparent magnitude of -17.6 and -22.6. Bright enough that there’s not really a night on the world (ten times, and a hundred times, the brightness of the full moon). I had been expecting at least one of the players to raise questions about the two stars, so had figured out their magnitudes ahead of time. It is sort of important since they do change the conditions on the world in between them, but as it turned out no-one asked questions.

The players quickly cottoned on to the fact that the Mainframe of Opadajo probably had a strong sense of Paranoia. Their direct approach means that I’m going to need to figure out a bit more about the world’s defences. I’m not expecting there to be a space battle next session, but I’ll be happier running the session having a good idea of exactly what is there. To be honest, I’m not that surprised that they’ve gone with this approach, but I did want to provide a sneakier option in case they did want it.